Berlin: Symphony of a Great City (1927)

Beginning at dawn and ending at midnight, this innovative documentary chronicles a day in the life of Berlin in the late 1920s. Director Walter Ruttman's "symphony" presents Berliners working hard by day and, later, enjoying the city's boisterous nightlife. The feature-length montage, created less than 20 years before the Nazi occupation, includes such sequences as a shot of pedestrians on the street followed by a brief clip of a herd of cows.